Lay & Lie

My memory recently lost this so I am relearning. It’s not as easy as it seems. Corrections welcome.

Lay is a transitive verb–something is being done to something else. I lay the child down to sleep. Lie is an intransitive verb–nothing or no one is being acted on. Now I lie down to sleep. The past tense of lay is laid. Last night I laid the child down right after dinner. The past tense of lie is lay. Last night I lay down to sleep soon after midnight. The past participle of lay is laid (same as the past tense). I have laid the child to sleep three times now. The past participle of lie is lain. I could have lain in bed until lunch. Layed is not a word; use laid.

enjambment

“Some of the factors that have contributed to the drastic decline of the art of bringing phrases to closure are clear enough. They include the wholesale de-formalization of poetry in our time and the consequent premium placed on enjambment; our dogmatic insistence on open-endedness and the bland tones of everyday language; our predilection for understatement and uneasiness about rhetorical display; our aversion to affirmation and our cult of the whisper.”  -Robert Pogue Harrison

The New York Review of Books, Volume 59, Number 2 · February 9, 2012. ‘The Book From Which Our Literature Springs’, by Robert Pogue Harrison.

Jules-Alexis Muenier

La leçon de catéchisme (1890)
Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie de Besançon
oil on canvas

Editorial: We are giving catechism a go. I have reservations that are admittedly abstract. The word itself is unfortunate– to sound down to. And while I like the idea of studying doctrines intellectually (in this case Christian doctrines), the thought of indoctrinating our daughter is rather off-putting. I am accepting the skepticism and discomfort as part of the process itself, which is why for now we are leaning in.

Schadenfreude

Meaning.  Pronunciation.

Gary Whitehead

A Glossary of Chickens

by Gary Whitehead

There should be a word for the way

they look with just one eye, neck bent,

for beetle or worm or strewn grain.

“Gleaning,” maybe, between “gizzard”

and “grit.” And for the way they run

toward someone they trust, their skirts

hiked, their plump bodies wobbling:

“bobbling,” let’s call it, inserted

after “blowout” and before “bloom.”

There should be terms, too, for things

they do not do—like urinate or chew—

but perhaps there already are.

I’d want a word for the way they drink,

head thrown back, throat wriggling,

like an old woman swallowing

a pill; a word beginning with “S,”

coming after “sex feather” and before “shank.”

And one for the sweetness of hens

but not roosters. We think

that by naming we can understand,

as if the tongue were more than muscle.

constult / latibulate / yepsen

constult
to act stupidly together.
latibulate
to hide oneself in a corner.
yepsen
the amount that can be held in two hands cupped together; also, the two cupped hands themselves.

nomenclature / nomenklatura

nomenclature
1. a set or system of names or terms, as those used in a particular science or art, by an individual or community, etc.;
2. the names or terms comprising a set or system.
nomenklatura
a select list or class of people from which appointees for top-level government positions are drawn, esp. from a Communist Party.
Thanks, dictionary.com

Gehenna

1. The valley of Hinnom, near Jerusalem, where propitiatory sacrifices were made to Moloch. [II Kings 23:10];
2. Hell;
3. Any place of extreme torment or suffering.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/gehenna

Gehenna (also gehenom or gehinom) is the Jewish equivalant to the Christian Purgatory. The name derived from the burning garbage dump near Jerusalem (the Valley of Hinnom), metaphorically identified with the entrance to the underworld. Gehenna is cited in the New Testament and in early Christian writing to represent the place where evil will be destroyed. It lends its name to Islam’s hell, Jahannam. In both Rabbinical Jewish and Christian writing, Gehenna as a destination of the wicked is different from Sheol, the abode of all the dead.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valley_of_Hinnom

encomium / Huguenot / cozen

encomium
Warm praise, especially a formal expression of such praise; a tribute (plural: encomiums or encomia).
Huguenot
A member of the Protestant Reformed Church of France during the 16th and 17th century.
cozen
To cheat; to defraud; to beguile; to deceive, usually by small arts, or in a pitiful way.

limn

1. To draw or paint; delineate.
2. To describe.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/limn

omphaloskepsis

Contemplation of one’s navel as an aid to meditation. From the Greek: omphalos (navel) + skepsis. The word has several other forms, such as omphaloskeptic, for someone who engages in navel-gazing, and omphaloskeptical, meaning to be in a self-absorbed state.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omphaloskepsis (thanks, bri)

lepidopterist / colocynth

lepidopterist
A person who catches and collects, studies, or simply observes lepidopterans, members of an order encompassing moths and the three superfamilies of butterflies, skipper butterflies, and moth-butterflies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lepidopterist
colocynth
A viny plant native to the Mediterranean Basin and Asia. It produces a lemon-sized, yellowish, green-mottled, spongy, and extremely bitter fruit, a powerful hepatic stimulant and hydragogue cathartic used as a strong laxative. Also see vine of Sodom.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/colocynth

floccinaucinihilipilification

A coinage … combining a number of roughly synonymous Latin stems. Latin flocci, from floccus, a wisp or piece of wool + nauci, from naucum, a trifle + nihili, from nihilum, nothing + pili, from pilus, a hair, something insignificant (all therefore having the sense of “worthless” or “nothing”) + -fication.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/floccinaucinihilipilification